Empowerment is a multi-dimensional social process that helps people to gain control over their own lives and communities in their society.  Empowerment occurs within sociological, psychological, economic spheres at various levels. Empowerment of women involves many things- economic opportunity, property rights, political representation, social equality, personal rights and so on.  The tribal society in Arunachal Pradesh is patriarchal system in which women’s position is much lower in every aspect of life.  The term empowerment is defined as “a distribution of social power and control of resources in favour of women”. This paper tries to examine the political empowerment of tribal women through PRIs in the state. The study is basically empirical in nature based on primary and secondary data. Primary data are collected from field study of two villages of Papumpare district considering 100 tribal women and 10 elected women Panchayat members through random sampling technique with the help of pre-designed and pre-structured questionnaire. The respondents are from the age group of (20-50) years. The introduction of statutory Panchayat Raj Institution and spread of party politics at the grass root level has given definite impetus to the entry of women in the leadership structure.  Most of the women have empowered or gone to be empowered more or less through Panchayat Raj Institution.

KEYWORDS: Empowerment, sociological, psychological, economic spheres, patriarchal systems